The Complete Works. William Butler Yeats

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СКАЧАТЬ threshed, and the souls are threshed from their husks.’

      William Blake.

      To A. E.

EARLY POEMS:

       BALLADS AND LYRICS

       Table of Contents

      TO SOME I HAVE TALKED WITH BY THE FIRE. A DEDICATION TO A VOLUME OF EARLY POEMS

      While I wrought out these fitful Danaan rhymes,

      My heart would brim with dreams about the times

      When we bent down above the fading coals;

      And talked of the dark folk, who live in souls

      Of passionate men, like bats in the dead trees;

      And of the wayward twilight companies,

      Who sigh with mingled sorrow and content,

      Because their blossoming dreams have never bent

      Under the fruit of evil and of good;

      And of the embattled flaming multitude

      Who rise, wing above wing, flame above flame,

      And, like a storm, cry the Ineffable Name,

      And with the clashing of their sword blades make

      A rapturous music, till the morning break,

      And the white hush end all, but the loud beat

      Of their long wings, the flash of their white feet.

THE SONG OF THE HAPPY SHEPHERD

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      The woods of Arcady are dead,

      And over is their antique joy;

      Of old the world on dreaming fed;

      Gray Truth is now her painted toy;

      Yet still she turns her restless head:

      But O, sick children of the world,

      Of all the many changing things

      In dreary dancing past us whirled,

      To the cracked tune that Chronos sings,

      Words alone are certain good.

      Where are now the warring kings,

      Word bemockers?—By the Rood

      Where are now the warring kings?

      An idle word is now their glory,

      By the stammering schoolboy said,

      Reading some entangled story:

      The kings of the old time are fled.

      The wandering earth herself may be

      Only a sudden flaming word,

      In clanging space a moment heard,

      Troubling the endless reverie.

      Then no wise worship dusty deeds,

      Nor seek—for this is also sooth—

      To hunger fiercely after truth,

      Lest all thy toiling only breeds

      New dreams, new dreams; there is no truth

      Saving in thine own heart. Seek, then,

      No learning from the starry men,

      Who follow with the optic glass

      The whirling ways of stars that pass;

      Seek, then—for this is also sooth—

      No word of theirs: the cold star-bane

      Has cloven and rent their hearts in twain,

      And dead is all their human truth.

      Go, gather by the humming sea

      Some twisted, echo-harbouring shell,

      And to its lips thy story tell,

      And they thy comforters will be,

      Rewording in melodious guile

      Thy fretful words a little while,

      Till they shall singing fade in ruth,

      And die a pearly brotherhood;

      For words alone are certain good:

      Sing, then, for this is also sooth.

      I must be gone: there is a grave

      Where daffodil and lily wave,

      And I would please the hapless faun,

      Buried under the sleepy ground,

      With mirthful songs before the dawn.

      His shouting days with mirth were crowned;

      And still I dream he treads the lawn,

      Walking ghostly in the dew,

      Pierced by my glad singing through,

      My songs of old earth’s dreamy youth:

      But ah! she dreams not now; dream thou!

      For fair are poppies on the brow:

      Dream, dream, for this is also sooth.

THE SAD SHEPHERD

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      There was a man whom Sorrow named his friend,

      And he, of his high comrade Sorrow dreaming,

      Went walking with slow steps along the gleaming

      And humming sands, where windy surges wend:

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